They reward what you can do. They cannot see who you are. An essay on capability as a cage, the difference between being needed and being seen, and the decade it costs to learn it.
Ilka, once again your work shines light on the shadows in my professional experience and I can't thank you enough for being there to raise those questions.
Last year I had a conversation with my line manager at the time who flat out said that I ticked all the boxes in his checklist about performance and growth metrics but somehow he didn't trust me to be able to handle the project, so he'll be replacing me. As I was going through your article this is the image that popped into my mind. I felt yet again the indignation of having been unjustly removed from the team I built from scratch (successfully on all objective counts).. and the fear that this is the 3rd time something like this has happened so surely there is something in me that provokes this perception. None of them were able to explain (or maybe willing to explain?) what that "something" was... and neither were I. I couldn't understand how come my peers and my team were appreciating me while my supervisors perceived me lacking in some un-named regard that the metrics did not reflect..
While I still don't have all the answers, your article helped me raise important awareness questions about corps - how we fit inside their boxes, what we leave locked inside us because they don't have a name for it and maybe... just maybe... what price we're ready to pay if we refuse to fit in their boxes. I'll sit with this article for awhile :)
Ellie, this is one of the most precise descriptions of that gap I've read — ticked every box, and still "didn't trust me to handle it." That line is doing so much. Because what you've named is the thing the scoreboard can't measure: the metrics said yes and the room said no, and nobody could tell you why.
I want to gently push on one piece, though. The third-time fear — "surely there's something in me that provokes this." Maybe. But notice the move you just made: you reached for the explanation that puts it all on you, because at least that one comes with a lever you can pull. "If it's me, I can fix me." The harder possibility is that you read clearly as someone who won't stay small inside the box, and that legibility is exactly what gets read as untrustworthy by people whose job is keeping the box intact. That's not a flaw in you. That's the box recognising you'll eventually leave it.
The question you ended on — what price we pay if we refuse to fit — that's the whole thing. Sit with it as long as it takes. What does the version of you who stopped trying to name the "something" for them actually want to build? 🫶🏻
Being needed and being seen had been two different things all along. I read that sentence and had to put my phone down.
Because I was exceptional at being needed. In my career. In my family. In my marriage. I built entire systems of usefulness around myself and called it competence. Called it strength. Called it love. And the part of me that simply wanted to be seen, not for what I could carry or fix or hold together, but for who I actually was underneath all of it, that part went quietly into a drawer for a very long time.
It is only now, on the other side of a marriage that used the same dynamic I had been practicing my whole life, that I am beginning to understand which half of myself I was actually feeding.
"Built entire systems of usefulness and called it competence" — I felt that in my whole body. So many of us were rewarded, for decades, for exactly the thing that was costing us. The competence was real. It just wasn't the same as being known.
The drawer eventually gets too full to close. Sounds like yours did. I'd love to hear more about what you're finding now that it's open 🫶🏻
The drawer got full enough that the marriage ending was what finally forced it open.
What I am finding now is at hellounraveling.substack.com. Forty days of writing from inside the unraveling rather than from the other side of it. Today’s piece is about what I believed about the six women who came before me.
Thank you for asking and I hope you find in it all something that would benefit or touch you somehow 🧡🤍🧡
This really struck a chord. The distinction between being rewarded for visible competence and being seen for the deeper, unspoken work is something I recognize from years in leadership. That hidden half—the quiet empathy, the questions no one asks, the attention to what others miss—is often the most valuable part of a professional’s impact. The challenge is trusting that it exists and matters, even when the system can’t articulate it.
Thank you, Charles — and you’ve named the hard part exactly. The trouble isn’t only that the system can’t articulate it; it’s that we absorb the system’s silence and start doubting it ourselves. By the time the title’s gone, you’ve often forgotten the hidden half was ever real. Learning to trust it again is most of the work. 🫶🏻
Hello Ilka, this has so resonated with me, you have articulated it perfectly. I am right at this moment in the inbetween, trying not to get too lost! I left my job about 3 weeks ago without a job to go to. I was feeling undervalued and belittled on a daily basis. I am in a very fortunate position to have a supportive, patient husband, but I still need to earn money... that's the trap!. I'm now trying to do something different, something more creative, but after 30 years of office work, it's not easy to switch. There are still bills to pay, which makes life very boring don't you think?
Hello Emma, thank you for trusting this here. Three weeks out, supportive husband, bills still arriving, 30 years to unlearn — that’s a lot to be holding at once. And “that’s the trap” — you already see it clearly, which matters more than it feels like right now. I’d only say: I don’t think it’s boredom. It’s the quiet after the noise, and it’s louder than anyone warns you. 🫶🏻
Thank you for this, Ilka. I've written about the grief that comes with the realization that even though you might have everything you think you should want, the job, the title, the financial reward, something is still missing. I'm looking forward to making use of the hallway workbook.
You named it exactly — everything in place and still that quiet something’s missing. It’s such a lonely grief because nothing on the outside explains it. Glad you’re writing into it too; that terrain needs more honest voices on it. The workbook will be there whenever you’re ready for it. 🫶🏻
Thanks Ilka, this is great. When you can fit well into corporate life and reap the benefits it is very hard to let it go. I once worked in R&D in a beautiful building, fantastic colleagues and a great salary. I called it the glass prison because it was too good to let go of. Finally I made it out.
At that time, I visited a coal mine in South Wales and learnt that not so long ago, young children were working down the mines. I realised how lucky I was to have missed this period, to have been given an education and opportunities. When I attended a corporate meeting where people were shirking, avoiding decisions, and no progress was being made, I realised I needed a new path. That was in 2011.
What a contrast to sit with — generations of children sent down the mines, and then a room full of adults too comfortable to decide anything. Sometimes the thing that frees you isn’t the misery, it’s the waste. Did the new path come quickly after 2011, or did it take a while to find its shape? 🫶🏻
“The glass prison” — that’s exactly it, Claire. The bars you can see straight through, made of all the good reasons to stay. What was the moment you finally knew you had to get out? 🫶🏻
Ilka, the phrase "capability is the most expensive cage" stayed with me because competence often creates obligations long before it creates fulfillment. Organizations naturally keep assigning people to the things they do well, but that can make it difficult to distinguish between a skill that serves the mission and a gift that expresses who we are. I wonder how many high performers are carrying exhaustion that has less to do with workload and more to do with spending years being rewarded for only part of themselves. Thank you for naming a tension that I suspect many accomplished people have felt but struggled to articulate.
“Rewarded for only part of themselves” — yes. That’s the exhaustion no amount of rest fixes, because it isn’t about workload. Given the work you do, I’d love to know: do you find people can name which part got left out, or does that take time to surface? 🫶🏻
Ilka, in my experience, it often takes time. Most people can immediately name what they are good at because the world has been rewarding that part of them for years. The harder question is identifying what has been underused, neglected, or quietly set aside in order to remain successful. What I have noticed is that the answer often surfaces indirectly: through recurring restlessness, persistent curiosity, or a sense of relief when they finally give themselves permission to explore a part of themselves that achievement never required. Thank you for posing such a thoughtful question.
This is really helpful. I like the reminder that Pinterest is not about quick attention, it is about building a path for people to keep finding your work over time which is really important for visibility and constant growth.
I think this is why it’s so hard to leave something that rewards you. It can start to feel like proof that you matter. But after a while, you realise it may only be rewarding one part of you, not the part that feels most like you.
That's powerful stuff. Thank you. I believe that so many of us feel this way at one time or another. My case is both similar yet different: I am the owner and president of my own company, yet I would feel this constantly in trying to "sell" what I can do to clients. I did this as not only a business owner, but also for many years as artist. At least as an artist I finally broke out of that--working on the buisness part...
There’s something almost sharper about your version, isn’t it — being the owner and still feeling you have to sell yourself. No boss to point at, just the same quiet question underneath. I’m curious what shifted for you when you stepped into the artist side. Did breaking out of it feel like a decision, or more like something that loosened on its own? 🫶🏻
Honestly, when one works as an artist as their primary source of income, one is always at the mercy of the market (at least in the U.S.). The market in this case refers to the venues, the grants, the record companies, the awarding bodies, and the ones paying for the creation. Even being on both the business and creative sides of the arts I had to adapt to these pressures. Once I launched my current company which has nothing to do with the arts, I was free to do whatever I wanted as an artist.
I feel many people stay in a career or job that feels stable and secure, even though they have bigger dreams. Until their dreams compel them to change course, even if it's in an unfamiliar direction that seems unstable. At some stage, we give ourselves permission to be who we've always known in our hearts for a long time 💜
Thank you for being so honest and authentic. I think that there are A LOT of people who live exactly what you are describing. We always think our lives will be more balanced "after the next project, the next big thing". Most people are on the hamster wheel of life and just getting by. As I am in my own "hallway" right now, my life design is going to be different this time. I want to build a life that I don't have to escape.
“A life I don’t have to escape”—that’s the whole reframe, isn’t it. Most of us design the escape hatch first and call it freedom, when the real work is building something we’d never want to flee. The fact that you can name that from inside your own hallway tells me this time really will be different. What’s the first thing you’re designing differently? 🫶🏻
There were many changes. I left a huge city to move to a small town. I wanted more nature, right outside my door. I live at the beach!!! I am surrounded by water and mountains and I still cannot believe how lucky I am!
I did not want traffic or losing so much time commuting.
I took a sabbatical, which has been absolutely magical. No other word for it. Now I am figuring out if I really want to go back to that extremely stressful career....
I am looking at my days and seeing how I want to spend them. An empty nest is approaching fast so that also is a huge transition. Having this time to really be with my son before he leaves has been extraordinary.
I know that I am not a morning person so I am done rushing.
“I am done rushing”—drop the mic. That’s not a small thing dressed up as a small thing; that’s a whole nervous system deciding to stop. And it’s telling that the clarity is arriving through days now—how you actually want to spend an ordinary Tuesday—rather than through one big dramatic answer about the career. That’s usually where the real one lives. I’ll be watching for the “more to come.” 🫶
The button stopped me. I never thought self deserved its own hole. I thought the button only had three — work, family, friends. I called that balance. I believed it for twenty years.
“I never thought self deserved its own hole”—that’s the line, isn’t it. Mine didn’t either. I called it balance too, right up until the day the one thread holding me snapped and there was nothing else sewn on. The self-hole turns out to be the one that keeps the others from having to carry everything. Which thread do you find yourself reaching for first, when you go to re-sew? 🫶🏻
“As thick as the rest”—yes. And the quiet mercy is that you’re not starting from nothing; forty years of the other three means you already know how to sew. You’re just turning the needle inward this time. 🫶🏻
Being capable and successful at your job is seductive. It's as reassuring as a marriage. But you were always going to choose freedom when the raw, sincere moment came.
Yes, exactly. Being good at something can make it harder to leave, because it keeps reassuring you that you belong there. But at some point, freedom starts to matter more than the reassurance.
“As reassuring as a marriage”—that’s spot on. Though I’ll confess the freedom didn’t feel inevitable from the inside; it took a kitchen floor and twenty years before I’d choose it. Do you think we sense the raw moment coming, or only recognise it once it’s already here? 🫶🏻
There is something so quietly devastating about being excellent at the wrong life. It is the kind of ache that does not look like suffering from the outside. You are competent, you are showing up, you are doing everything “right,” and yet something inside knows this is not the life you were meant to live. I appreciate how you wrote this with honesty and without trying to fix it. This felt like permission to stop pretending everything is fine and to trust the quiet knowing that has been there all along. I am going to hold onto these words for a long time.
That phrase about trusting the quiet knowing that’s been there all along is the whole thing, isn’t it. What does yours tend to say, when you let yourself listen? 🫶🏻
I can’t say I think positively and do grounding exercises to feel better. I spiral, I have my moments of depression. But I have always believed in something that always has worked for me in different moments of my life: the moment I let go of things is the moment I get more than I can ask for. So I try to let go…
“The moment I let go is the moment I get more than I can ask for”—and you’ve earned that the hard way, through the spirals, not around them. That’s the part most people skip. Thank you for not skipping it here. 🫶🏻
Ilka, once again your work shines light on the shadows in my professional experience and I can't thank you enough for being there to raise those questions.
Last year I had a conversation with my line manager at the time who flat out said that I ticked all the boxes in his checklist about performance and growth metrics but somehow he didn't trust me to be able to handle the project, so he'll be replacing me. As I was going through your article this is the image that popped into my mind. I felt yet again the indignation of having been unjustly removed from the team I built from scratch (successfully on all objective counts).. and the fear that this is the 3rd time something like this has happened so surely there is something in me that provokes this perception. None of them were able to explain (or maybe willing to explain?) what that "something" was... and neither were I. I couldn't understand how come my peers and my team were appreciating me while my supervisors perceived me lacking in some un-named regard that the metrics did not reflect..
While I still don't have all the answers, your article helped me raise important awareness questions about corps - how we fit inside their boxes, what we leave locked inside us because they don't have a name for it and maybe... just maybe... what price we're ready to pay if we refuse to fit in their boxes. I'll sit with this article for awhile :)
Ellie, this is one of the most precise descriptions of that gap I've read — ticked every box, and still "didn't trust me to handle it." That line is doing so much. Because what you've named is the thing the scoreboard can't measure: the metrics said yes and the room said no, and nobody could tell you why.
I want to gently push on one piece, though. The third-time fear — "surely there's something in me that provokes this." Maybe. But notice the move you just made: you reached for the explanation that puts it all on you, because at least that one comes with a lever you can pull. "If it's me, I can fix me." The harder possibility is that you read clearly as someone who won't stay small inside the box, and that legibility is exactly what gets read as untrustworthy by people whose job is keeping the box intact. That's not a flaw in you. That's the box recognising you'll eventually leave it.
The question you ended on — what price we pay if we refuse to fit — that's the whole thing. Sit with it as long as it takes. What does the version of you who stopped trying to name the "something" for them actually want to build? 🫶🏻
Being needed and being seen had been two different things all along. I read that sentence and had to put my phone down.
Because I was exceptional at being needed. In my career. In my family. In my marriage. I built entire systems of usefulness around myself and called it competence. Called it strength. Called it love. And the part of me that simply wanted to be seen, not for what I could carry or fix or hold together, but for who I actually was underneath all of it, that part went quietly into a drawer for a very long time.
It is only now, on the other side of a marriage that used the same dynamic I had been practicing my whole life, that I am beginning to understand which half of myself I was actually feeding.
DK, The Unraveling 🤍
"Built entire systems of usefulness and called it competence" — I felt that in my whole body. So many of us were rewarded, for decades, for exactly the thing that was costing us. The competence was real. It just wasn't the same as being known.
The drawer eventually gets too full to close. Sounds like yours did. I'd love to hear more about what you're finding now that it's open 🫶🏻
The drawer got full enough that the marriage ending was what finally forced it open.
What I am finding now is at hellounraveling.substack.com. Forty days of writing from inside the unraveling rather than from the other side of it. Today’s piece is about what I believed about the six women who came before me.
Thank you for asking and I hope you find in it all something that would benefit or touch you somehow 🧡🤍🧡
DK, The Unraveling
This really struck a chord. The distinction between being rewarded for visible competence and being seen for the deeper, unspoken work is something I recognize from years in leadership. That hidden half—the quiet empathy, the questions no one asks, the attention to what others miss—is often the most valuable part of a professional’s impact. The challenge is trusting that it exists and matters, even when the system can’t articulate it.
Thank you, Charles — and you’ve named the hard part exactly. The trouble isn’t only that the system can’t articulate it; it’s that we absorb the system’s silence and start doubting it ourselves. By the time the title’s gone, you’ve often forgotten the hidden half was ever real. Learning to trust it again is most of the work. 🫶🏻
Hello Ilka, this has so resonated with me, you have articulated it perfectly. I am right at this moment in the inbetween, trying not to get too lost! I left my job about 3 weeks ago without a job to go to. I was feeling undervalued and belittled on a daily basis. I am in a very fortunate position to have a supportive, patient husband, but I still need to earn money... that's the trap!. I'm now trying to do something different, something more creative, but after 30 years of office work, it's not easy to switch. There are still bills to pay, which makes life very boring don't you think?
Hello Emma, thank you for trusting this here. Three weeks out, supportive husband, bills still arriving, 30 years to unlearn — that’s a lot to be holding at once. And “that’s the trap” — you already see it clearly, which matters more than it feels like right now. I’d only say: I don’t think it’s boredom. It’s the quiet after the noise, and it’s louder than anyone warns you. 🫶🏻
Thank you for this, Ilka. I've written about the grief that comes with the realization that even though you might have everything you think you should want, the job, the title, the financial reward, something is still missing. I'm looking forward to making use of the hallway workbook.
You named it exactly — everything in place and still that quiet something’s missing. It’s such a lonely grief because nothing on the outside explains it. Glad you’re writing into it too; that terrain needs more honest voices on it. The workbook will be there whenever you’re ready for it. 🫶🏻
Thanks Ilka, this is great. When you can fit well into corporate life and reap the benefits it is very hard to let it go. I once worked in R&D in a beautiful building, fantastic colleagues and a great salary. I called it the glass prison because it was too good to let go of. Finally I made it out.
It came quickly, I set up a small consulting & temporary workers company.
At that time, I visited a coal mine in South Wales and learnt that not so long ago, young children were working down the mines. I realised how lucky I was to have missed this period, to have been given an education and opportunities. When I attended a corporate meeting where people were shirking, avoiding decisions, and no progress was being made, I realised I needed a new path. That was in 2011.
What a contrast to sit with — generations of children sent down the mines, and then a room full of adults too comfortable to decide anything. Sometimes the thing that frees you isn’t the misery, it’s the waste. Did the new path come quickly after 2011, or did it take a while to find its shape? 🫶🏻
“The glass prison” — that’s exactly it, Claire. The bars you can see straight through, made of all the good reasons to stay. What was the moment you finally knew you had to get out? 🫶🏻
Ilka, the phrase "capability is the most expensive cage" stayed with me because competence often creates obligations long before it creates fulfillment. Organizations naturally keep assigning people to the things they do well, but that can make it difficult to distinguish between a skill that serves the mission and a gift that expresses who we are. I wonder how many high performers are carrying exhaustion that has less to do with workload and more to do with spending years being rewarded for only part of themselves. Thank you for naming a tension that I suspect many accomplished people have felt but struggled to articulate.
“Rewarded for only part of themselves” — yes. That’s the exhaustion no amount of rest fixes, because it isn’t about workload. Given the work you do, I’d love to know: do you find people can name which part got left out, or does that take time to surface? 🫶🏻
Ilka, in my experience, it often takes time. Most people can immediately name what they are good at because the world has been rewarding that part of them for years. The harder question is identifying what has been underused, neglected, or quietly set aside in order to remain successful. What I have noticed is that the answer often surfaces indirectly: through recurring restlessness, persistent curiosity, or a sense of relief when they finally give themselves permission to explore a part of themselves that achievement never required. Thank you for posing such a thoughtful question.
This is really helpful. I like the reminder that Pinterest is not about quick attention, it is about building a path for people to keep finding your work over time which is really important for visibility and constant growth.
I think this is why it’s so hard to leave something that rewards you. It can start to feel like proof that you matter. But after a while, you realise it may only be rewarding one part of you, not the part that feels most like you.
Yes, exactly this 🫶🏻
That's powerful stuff. Thank you. I believe that so many of us feel this way at one time or another. My case is both similar yet different: I am the owner and president of my own company, yet I would feel this constantly in trying to "sell" what I can do to clients. I did this as not only a business owner, but also for many years as artist. At least as an artist I finally broke out of that--working on the buisness part...
There’s something almost sharper about your version, isn’t it — being the owner and still feeling you have to sell yourself. No boss to point at, just the same quiet question underneath. I’m curious what shifted for you when you stepped into the artist side. Did breaking out of it feel like a decision, or more like something that loosened on its own? 🫶🏻
Honestly, when one works as an artist as their primary source of income, one is always at the mercy of the market (at least in the U.S.). The market in this case refers to the venues, the grants, the record companies, the awarding bodies, and the ones paying for the creation. Even being on both the business and creative sides of the arts I had to adapt to these pressures. Once I launched my current company which has nothing to do with the arts, I was free to do whatever I wanted as an artist.
I feel many people stay in a career or job that feels stable and secure, even though they have bigger dreams. Until their dreams compel them to change course, even if it's in an unfamiliar direction that seems unstable. At some stage, we give ourselves permission to be who we've always known in our hearts for a long time 💜
What an excellent article, Ilka!
Thank you for being so honest and authentic. I think that there are A LOT of people who live exactly what you are describing. We always think our lives will be more balanced "after the next project, the next big thing". Most people are on the hamster wheel of life and just getting by. As I am in my own "hallway" right now, my life design is going to be different this time. I want to build a life that I don't have to escape.
“A life I don’t have to escape”—that’s the whole reframe, isn’t it. Most of us design the escape hatch first and call it freedom, when the real work is building something we’d never want to flee. The fact that you can name that from inside your own hallway tells me this time really will be different. What’s the first thing you’re designing differently? 🫶🏻
There were many changes. I left a huge city to move to a small town. I wanted more nature, right outside my door. I live at the beach!!! I am surrounded by water and mountains and I still cannot believe how lucky I am!
I did not want traffic or losing so much time commuting.
I took a sabbatical, which has been absolutely magical. No other word for it. Now I am figuring out if I really want to go back to that extremely stressful career....
I am looking at my days and seeing how I want to spend them. An empty nest is approaching fast so that also is a huge transition. Having this time to really be with my son before he leaves has been extraordinary.
I know that I am not a morning person so I am done rushing.
More to come!!!!🤣🤣🤣
“I am done rushing”—drop the mic. That’s not a small thing dressed up as a small thing; that’s a whole nervous system deciding to stop. And it’s telling that the clarity is arriving through days now—how you actually want to spend an ordinary Tuesday—rather than through one big dramatic answer about the career. That’s usually where the real one lives. I’ll be watching for the “more to come.” 🫶
"More to come"....🤩🤩🤩
It's exciting and anxiety-provoking in equal measure, but I feel more calm and more alive than I have felt in a long time.
The button stopped me. I never thought self deserved its own hole. I thought the button only had three — work, family, friends. I called that balance. I believed it for twenty years.
“I never thought self deserved its own hole”—that’s the line, isn’t it. Mine didn’t either. I called it balance too, right up until the day the one thread holding me snapped and there was nothing else sewn on. The self-hole turns out to be the one that keeps the others from having to carry everything. Which thread do you find yourself reaching for first, when you go to re-sew? 🫶🏻
The self thread. The others are still strong — I just spent forty years making sure of that. Now it's time to make this one as thick as the rest.
“As thick as the rest”—yes. And the quiet mercy is that you’re not starting from nothing; forty years of the other three means you already know how to sew. You’re just turning the needle inward this time. 🫶🏻
Being capable and successful at your job is seductive. It's as reassuring as a marriage. But you were always going to choose freedom when the raw, sincere moment came.
Yes, exactly. Being good at something can make it harder to leave, because it keeps reassuring you that you belong there. But at some point, freedom starts to matter more than the reassurance.
“As reassuring as a marriage”—that’s spot on. Though I’ll confess the freedom didn’t feel inevitable from the inside; it took a kitchen floor and twenty years before I’d choose it. Do you think we sense the raw moment coming, or only recognise it once it’s already here? 🫶🏻
we know it's there. we just try to be adult about it. but we know as sure as we know when love is gone
There is something so quietly devastating about being excellent at the wrong life. It is the kind of ache that does not look like suffering from the outside. You are competent, you are showing up, you are doing everything “right,” and yet something inside knows this is not the life you were meant to live. I appreciate how you wrote this with honesty and without trying to fix it. This felt like permission to stop pretending everything is fine and to trust the quiet knowing that has been there all along. I am going to hold onto these words for a long time.
That phrase about trusting the quiet knowing that’s been there all along is the whole thing, isn’t it. What does yours tend to say, when you let yourself listen? 🫶🏻
I can’t say I think positively and do grounding exercises to feel better. I spiral, I have my moments of depression. But I have always believed in something that always has worked for me in different moments of my life: the moment I let go of things is the moment I get more than I can ask for. So I try to let go…
“The moment I let go is the moment I get more than I can ask for”—and you’ve earned that the hard way, through the spirals, not around them. That’s the part most people skip. Thank you for not skipping it here. 🫶🏻